For America-250 (gross) the state of Ohio is revisioning it's native vegitation maps and digitizing original surveyor notes.

They're updating thier progress quarterly, check it out here. Last update was in March. Its very cool.

https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/land-water/18th-century-vegetation-of-ohio/vegetation-map/vegetation-map

If the history books that I've read are correct, then during the time of Alexander the Great, the northern coast of Africa (outside of the areas with higher human population density) was a functioning dry-forest ecosystem. During the time of the Roman Empire, people cut down large areas of forest in order to plant grass – wheat and barley for human consumption, and pasture grass for cows and goats. Without sufficient forest cover to pull in moisture from the Mediterranean, the rains stopped coming, the remaining vegetation died off, and the Sahara Desert advanced to the coast. This was a case of human-caused climate change.

Forests precede civilisations, and deserts follow them.

Something to keep in mind the next time that you hear/read that non-forest ecosystems are "natural" and should be preserved as they are.

• Mennonite families in Belize could pay millions to settle on around 24,000 hectares (59,300 acres) in Para, Suriname, a district with around 90% forest cover.
• Community leaders from Shipyard and Indian Creek, Belize, have taken multiple trips to Suriname to analyze soil quality and learn about the country’s farming regulations. Members from Spanish Lookout, another Mennonite community, have also started looking into a Suriname relocation.
• The move is being facilitated by Braganza Marketing Group, run by Ruud Souverein, a Dutch national living in Suriname who was involved in a previously failed government program to bring Mennonites from Bolivia in 2023.
• Environmental groups have expressed concern about Mennonites’ tendencies to expand into forested areas, circumvent environmental regulations, and settle on land without proper titles.

“If everything was virgin forest and intact — no food, you’d go hungry tonight.”

“There has to be a balance.”

Food forests are the balance.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/36439248

• In recent decades, the Amazon Rainforest has repeatedly and increasingly been struck by devastating drought along with record heat due to climate change. Add to this record wildfires, rapid deforestation and land conversion for agriculture.
• Numerous field studies and modeling have found that these extreme changes are pushing the Amazon toward a tipping point and collapse of the biome — an ecological disaster that would release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
• But one research team, in a recently published study, offered up some hope: They found that little-studied low water table wetland Amazon forests — constituting up to 36% of Amazon trees — have stood up well to, and even thrived, during major droughts, with an increase in aboveground biomass.
• Those findings, the research team says, put the inevitability of an Amazon tipping point and collapse in some doubt, with the possibility that low water table forests could serve as a refugia for biodiversity. They also urge that these areas become a priority for protection and conservation as a hedge against future climate change.

• Tropical forests can regrow within decades, with species abundance and diversity recovering quickly, but full ecological recovery—especially the return of original species composition—takes much longer.
• Many mobile species such as birds, bats, and bees persist or return early, helping drive regeneration by dispersing seeds and pollinating plants, while slower-moving or long-lived species lag behind.
• Forests may regain high numbers of species relatively fast, but the specific mix of old-growth species takes decades or longer to reassemble, meaning a regrown forest is not the same as the one that was lost.
• Recovery depends on time, prior land use, and proximity to intact habitat, suggesting that protecting and allowing secondary forests to regenerate can be a practical and cost-effective path for restoring biodiversity.

• Estimated to be more than 2,400 years old, one alerce tree in Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park hosts about twice as much fungal diversity underground as younger alerce trees, a team of researchers found.
• The scientists found 361 fungal DNA sequences unique to this tree, indicating that older trees harbor a vaster fungal network that benefits other plants on the forest floor.
• Real estate expansion, climate change and infrastructure projects continue to threaten the alerce, which is listed as endangered. Although Chile protects the species, experts say older trees that support complex ecosystems should enjoy higher levels of protection and limited interaction from humans.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/36264554

In a Swiss forest lab, scientists tracked how beech and oak leaves cool themselves and pinpointed the moment heat and drought push them past their limits.

• El anuncio de la construcción de un tren bioceánico entre Perú y Brasil ha despertado preocupación por los posibles impactos sociales y ambientales.
• Los expertos alertan sobre las consecuencias en la zona que cruzará la Amazonía peruana y brasileña, por las afectaciones a los pueblos indígenas y a la biodiversidad.
• Hasta ahora no hay una ruta definitiva, sin embargo, los posibles trazos cruzarían por Ucayali o Madre de Dios, en Perú.
• El Gobierno Regional de Ucayali ha manifestado su interés en que el tren pase por ese departamento porque impulsa la agenda de integración amazónica y la mejora de la conectividad con Brasil.

• Discussions around the construction of a railway line linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in South America have raised concerns about the potential social and environmental impacts.
• Experts warn about the consequences within and around the proposed routes of the Bioceanic Railway between Peru and Brazil, potentially harming Indigenous communities as well as the native Amazonian ecosystem.
• While authorities told Mongabay that there’s no “definitive route” to date, all the potential routes would cross through environmentally sensitive areas of the Peruvian regions of Ucayali and Madre de Dios.
• Critics also warn that opening new routes inside the Amazon could boost criminal activity, paving the way for illegal mining and drug trafficking.

• The Global Landscapes Forum recently announced the addition of 12 new “chapter” members to its GLFx network.
• The GLFx network connects independent, community-oriented groups worldwide to strengthen their work protecting and restoring healthy forests and other landscapes.
• Five of the new members are in Africa, including the School Food Forest Initiative in Uganda, which works with children to plant trees and grow food on school grounds.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/35907897

• A study looking at land and atmosphere interactions in the Amazon Basin across four decades found that 52-72% of the rainfall decline in the southern Amazon is due to large-scale deforestation.
• Between 1980 and 2019, annual precipitation in the southern Amazon declined by 8-11%, with most of the region losing on average 7.7% of its forest cover over largely the same period.
• The research also indicates that climate models might underestimate the contribution of deforestation to precipitation reduction by as much as 50%, which could mean that rainfall thresholds in the Amazon could be crossed earlier than expected.

biotic pump theory

drivers of Amazon deforestation

do something about it

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/25440472

When the Trump administration announced plans last year to rescind a rule limiting roadbuilding and timber harvests on millions of acres of national forests and grasslands, officials called the repeal necessary to prevent and manage wildfires.

But as the U.S. Department of Agriculture prepares to release its draft environmental impact statement for the rescission, that justification is unraveling. And many critics of the move see the claim that roads are needed to fight fires in remote forests as cover for a giveaway to the timber industry.

On average, about 8 million acres have burned each year between 2017 and 2021, according to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly double the average from 1987 to 1991. Wildfires on federal lands average about five times the size of those in the rest of the country, leading some of the nation’s top land managers to argue that national forests are a front line for fighting the nation’s steep increase in wildland blazes.

Yet a chorus of fire scientists, frontline firefighters, legal experts and the agency’s own historical record have contradicted that reasoning, saying that roads don’t reduce wildfire risk; they multiply it.

If he had to name the five biggest obstacles to effective wildfire response, lack of roads “probably either wouldn’t be on the list, or it’d be at the bottom,” said Lucas Mayfield, a former Hotshot firefighter and co-founder of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit that advocates for policy on behalf of firefighters.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/43117645

Beyond human ignitions, roads also alter the ecological conditions that drive fire risk. Aplet’s research found elevated ignitions from lightning near roads, not because there were more strikes, but because roads change ground-level fuel conditions by putting gaps in the forest canopy that allow sunlight and wind to heat and dry vegetation on the forest floor.

Roads also serve as corridors for invasive species, many of which evolved to use fire to help them spread. In the Great Basin, an area that stretches from Salt Lake City to nearly Sacramento, southern Oregon to Las Vegas, cheatgrass carried by vehicles, boots, and livestock to roadsides has displaced native vegetation by creating continuous fields of fine stalks that dry out when other grasses are just sprouting. The dry cheatgrass ignites easily and burns quickly across landscapes where native grasses that stay moist later in the season and grow in dispersed bunches previously inhibited the spread of the flames.

Who are the winners of European Tree of the Year 2026?

On a recent hike in Germany I came across a tree that I never saw before. Its entire trunk was covered with holes. The bark wasn't cut or punctured, just weirdly bent inwards. There was just this one tree that looked like this. Unfortunately, it didn't have leaves yet.

Do you know what kind of tree that is? Or is it some kind of virus / cancer etc. causing this?

Ecuador, among the world’s most biologically diverse countries, also holds enormous reserves of oil, copper, gold and other minerals. Global markets want them. Multinational companies are itching to dig. And a cash-strapped government is eager to sell. The legal battles are intensifying.

• Last month, the Brazilian Supreme Court authorized the possibility of mining exploration and exploitation inside an Indigenous territory for the first time, at the request of an Indigenous Cinta Larga association in the southwestern Amazon.
• While the decision does not automatically authorize mining within Cinta Larga land, it has set a deadline for Congress to regulate mining in Indigenous lands and has established provisional rules in case mining authorization is approved by Congress, such as allowing mining on only 1% of the territory.
• A representative of the Cinta Larga Patjamaaj Association told Mongabay that the absence of such a law has prevented them from being able to benefit economically from mining on their land, leading to a lack of income for health, education and sustainability projects.
• Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples (MPI), several public prosecutors and other Indigenous peoples and organizations have raised concerns about the precedent this could set, and say that by establishing these rules, it can be interpreted as opening the door to future exploration requests while on-site environmental compliance inspections in Brazil remain rare.

• A 4 meter high perimeter wall was built alongside a village bordering Ngezi Forest Reserve as construction to a luxury resort estate has started on Zanzibar’s Pemba island.
• A dirt road cutting through the protected forest has been widened to facilitate the transport of goods.
• Researchers warn that no environmental planning has been done and that animal and plant species could go extinct if the development goes ahead.